President Trump in less than 2 weeks in office has become the super-imperial president. He has far outpaced his predecessors in issuing executive orders.

Remember when President Obama issued orders often to solve problems when Congress failed to act. Republicans were livid and complained about his illegal imperial presidency. Now President Trump is out doing that. You would think Republicans would again be outraged. But this super-imperial presidency is much to their liking.

A few Republicans have complained about some specific executive orders but for the most part hypocrisy rules. See the recent editorial in USA Today “Hypocrisy on executive orders: Our view” for details.

It may come as a surprise to many but President Trump is going to have a diverse administration. You say you haven’t seen it. Well, the diversity is there and increasing, but you haven’t looked hard enough.

His cabinet includes both billionaires and multi-millionaires. He has added Steven Bannon to his National Security Council to add a bit of diversity. Why should the National Security Council be dominated by security experts and folks like the director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
Continue reading “Diversity, President Trump, Steve Bannon”

I’m glad that President Trump shares the truth and avoids the biased media.

After watching the news with thousands of people around the county protesting President Trump’s immigration order and the detention of legal residents, legal immigrants, and visa holders I was not surprised to hear about his attempt to blame the problem on airline computer problems.
Continue reading “President Trump shares the truth and avoids the biased media”

President Trump has recently issued an executive order on immigration. I have been writing about that alot in the past few days. But this post is just about a small part of it which is quoted below.

Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.

Since the ban is on immigration from 7 majority-Muslim nations, it is very clear that minority religion means all religions except Islam.
Continue reading “Trump’s religious preferences on immigration”

I used to call this blog Reality Based Opinions. Then I thought that since my opinions are not the only ones based on reality, and there may be relatively few who do not base opinions on reality, Reality Based Opinions was more than a bit presumptuous and discouraging of any real conversation so a new name was in order.

I chose Retired Guy since that did describe my situation. I am retired and now have time to read books and publish some book reviews here, time to work on my genealogy and publish something here in hopes of finding a new relative, and time to express my opinions (which I believe to be based on reality).
Continue reading “Reality Based Opinions”

I just read an article on Ethics Trump-style while writing my last post. In some respects it seems that President Trump’s executive order which was proclaimed as strengthening our ethics rules on lobbyists was actually weaker than the Obama rules it replaced.

Read the Politico article on Trump lobbying ban weakens Obama rules.

So now we are told there are alternative facts. Is a fact something firm or do we need to consider each alternative reality?

How many realities are there?

Do we need to account for all of them in our thinking?

Once upon a time there were facts and pretty much everyone agreed on them but there were often had different interpretations as to what the facts meant or perhaps differing opinions on the best way to deal with them.  Now the facts are unclear because there are alternative facts and maybe alternative realities to consider .
Continue reading “Alternative facts  or alternative  reality”